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7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/psy-385-sample-powerpoint-summer-ii-08 1/15
The Effect of Mood and Reading
Habits on Short Term Memory
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Introduction
The purpose of this experiment was to determine if being in a positive or negative mood influences how much a person can store in short term memory as a function of reading habits.
Previous studies have shown that what a personremembers is effected by their emotions. The person willremember more negative things if they are in a negativemood and more positive things is they are in a positive
mood.One study showed that subjects were less able to recognizenegative facial expressions and better able to recognizepositive facial expressions after a course of antidepressants( Goodwin, 2004)
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Introduction
More studies have looked at what a person remembers
when the are in a specific mood, not how much they
remember which this study looked at.
Literature has show that reading has many benefitsincluding helping cognitive developments. One particular
study looked the benefits of reading for children with
Down Syndrome and the effects it had on their cognitive
development. It was mostly found to increaseperformance (Cuskelly, 2002)
There has been little research done on specifically what
good and bad reading habits do to short term memory
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Introduction
In the experiment it was hypothesized that people in a
positive mood will be able to perform better than a
person in a negative mood on a recall test
It was also hypothesized that people with good reading habits will perform better on recall test than a person
with poor reading habits
Subjects that have both a positive mood and good
reading habits should also be able to perform better
than those that have negative mood and poor reading
habits
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Method
The experiment involved 15 subjects (4 male
and 11 female) who were students and Central
Michigan University
The only requirements were that the subjects be
18 years of age or older
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Method
The experiment packet included a consent
forms, experiment instructions, a demographic
questionnaire, a survey about the subjects
current mood, a survey about the subjects
reading habits, a list of 24 study words for the
recall test, and the actual recall test
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Method
Subjects were asked to fill out the demographic
questionnaire and the mood and reading surveys
They were then asked to study the list of 24 words
included in the experiment packet for four minutes with the help of cue words
The subjects then wrote down as many of the words
that they could recall on a separate piece of paper that
was also included in the packet. The results were then
calculated
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Positive mood had greater mean recall scores than
negative mood, regardless of their reading history
60
65
70
75
80
Positive Negative
MOOD
M e
a n R e c a l l
S c o r e
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Reading frequently resulted in greater mean recall
scores than reading less frequently, regardless of
their mood state
60
65
70
75
80
85
High Low
READING HISTORY
M
e a n R e c a l l S c
o r e
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Effect of reading history on mean recall scores was
greater in negative mood than in positive mood
50
60
70
80
90
High Low
READING HISTORY
M e a n R e c a l l S
c o r e
PositiveNegative
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Results
In the experiment it was found that positive mood had
greater mean recall scores than negative mood,
regardless of what the subjects reading history was
Having good reading habits resulted in greater meanrecall scores than having poor reading habits,
regardless of their state of mood
It was also found that effect of reading history on mean
recall scores was greater in negative mood than in
positive mood
7/28/2019 PSY 385 Sample Powerpoint Summer II 08
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Discussion
The most important findings of the experiment were that
reading history had a greater impact on recall scores when the
subject was in a negative mood rather than a positive mood,
however these results were not found to be significant, but it
showed strong trends
The fact that subjects with a positive mood had greater mean
recall scores than subjects in a negative mood, and that good
reading habits also resulted in a greater mean recall score than
poor reading habits also showed strong trends
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Discussion
To find significant results the experiment could have used a
larger number of subjects, 15 subjects is a very small sample
size
Using all Central Michigan students is also not representative of
the population, all the subjects were of 18-23 years of age, and
had similar demographic backgrounds
It is difficult to assume that all the subjects were completely
truthful in describing their current mood, and determining their
past and present reading habits
Different questions could have also been asked in determining
if the subjects had good or bad reading habits
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Discussion
The results of this experiment shows the importance of being in
a positive mood for short term memory performance and the
importance of being in a positive mood for many other things
Also the fact that reading habits had a stronger effect on recall
scores in negative mood than in a positive mood further shows
the importance of being in a positive mood
These findings help show the importance in emphasizing mood
in school programs to help increase performance, possibly even
to increase job performance, and maybe even to help people with learning disabilities increase their cognitive abilities
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the subjects that participated in my
experiment and helped me achieve my results
I would also like to thank Dr. Justin Oh-Lee for all his
assistance with the idea of my experiment, helping setting up
the experiment, and interpreting the results